Rick Santelli

Rick Santelli is an editor for the CNBC Business News network.[2] He joined CNBC as an on-air editor on June 14, 1999, reporting primarily from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. He was formerly the vice president for an institutional trading and hedge fund account for futures-related products. He is also credited with being a catalyst in the early formation of the Tea Party movement via a statement he made on February 19, 2009.[3]

In the early 1980s Santelli got an up-close-and-personal education in futures trading, foreign exchange and customer relations from his then mentor and employer, RJ Abrams. Abrams filled customer orders in the Japanese Yen pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for all the major brokerage houses, most of which no longer exist. Santelli's job was to keep customer orders, mostly entered on paper via Telex machines arranged according to price and to interface with customers.

Santelli drew attention for his remarks made on February 19, 2009, about the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, which was announced on February 18. While broadcasting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli accused the government of "promoting bad behavior", and raised the possibility of a "Chicago Tea Party". He suggested that individuals who knowingly obtained high-risk mortgages (and faced impending foreclosure as a consequence) were "losers".[5] The Tea Party remark was credited by some as launching the Tea Party movement.[6][7]

I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in the American notion to get involved with what's going on with our government. I haven't organized. I'm going to have to work to pay my taxes, so I'm not going to be able to get away today. But, I have to tell you – I'm pretty proud of this.[12]

In the world of financial "journalism," CNBC's Rick Santelli stands out as a refreshing and intelligent antidote to the hordes of perma-bulls, fed apologists, and chart sorcerers that otherwise pollute the financial airwaves. ... The trouble with Santelli, however, is that his political and economic philosophy is inconsistent and incomplete, and does not offer a viable alternative to that being peddled by his Keynesian opponents.[13]

Santelli has also been criticized by the left; for example, George Monbiot said "it is the most alarming example of cheap demagoguery you are likely to have seen."[14]Paul Krugman said:

...Somehow, [the Republican Party] has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC's Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called "losers." If you're an American, and you're down on your luck, these people don't want to help; they want to give you an extra kick....[7]